Teaching notes for this activity

This discussion exercise would work best in small groups, getting students around 15 – 20 minutes to work through the questions and the issues.

Student task

The following is a summary/excerpt from a study on Millennials – otherwise known as Gen Y – and their view of marketing communication from banks. Review the following article and then answer the questions at the end.

Millennials don’t like the way banks communicate.

Many Millennial consumers believe that their primary financial institution doesn’t send them marketing materials that interest them. Nearly half (46%) said their bank does not send marketing materials that are relevant to a future financial need. Two in five Millennials also complain that the offers they do receive aren’t personalized.

“I get a lot of advertising stuff from Wells Fargo,” bemoans one of the bank’s Millennial customers in a video from FICO on YouTube. “It just goes in the trash… immediately. I don’t think my bank understands me as a human being. [My bank] is just a hole where I throw my money into.”

Somewhat paradoxically, nearly 75% of Millennials say they don’t receive too many offers from their bank, so they are open to more communication.

Millennials might say they would be receptive to more communications from their bank, but only if they’re sent via one of their top four preferred channels: (1) email, (2) text message, (3) bank website, and (4) bank’s mobile app. And yet 43% of Millennials don’t think that their bank communicates to them through their preferred medium/device.

In the FICO video, another Millennial consumer echoed this sentiment: “[My bank] still sends me stuff in the mail, which is weird and annoying, and I don’t want that.”